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Isaiah 33
Psalm of hope in Yahweh
1 Woe to you, ravager never ravaged, plunderer never plundered! When your ravaging is over, you shall be ravaged; when your plundering is done, you shall be plundered.
2 Yahweh, have pity on us, we hope in you. Be our strong arm each morning, our salvation in time of distress.
3 At the sound of your threat peoples flee, when you rise nations scatter,
4 they gather loot as the grasshopper gathers, they leap on it as locusts leap.
5 Yahweh is exalted, for he is enthroned above, and fills Zion with justice and integrity.
6 Your continuance is assured; wisdom and knowledge are riches that save, the fear of Yahweh is his treasure.
The intervention of Yahweh
7 Look, Ariel is lamenting in the streets, the ambassadors of peace weep bitterly.
8 The highways are deserted, no travellers use the roads. Treaties are broken, witnesses despised, there is respect for no one.
9 The land mourns, it pines away, Lebanon is withered with shame, Sharon is a desert, Bashan and Carmel are stripped bare.
10 ‘Now I stand up,’ says Yahweh ‘now I rise to my full height.
11 You have conceived chaff, you will give birth to straw, my breath shall devour you like fire.
12 ‘The peoples will be reduced to lime, like cut thorns they will be burnt in the fire.
13 You who are far away, listen to what I have done, and you who are near, realise my strength.’
14 Sinners in Zion are struck with horror and fear seizes on the godless. Which of us can live with this devouring fire, which of us exist in everlasting flames?
15 – He who acts with integrity, who speaks sincerely and rejects extortionate profit, who waves away bribes from his hands, shuts suggestions of murder out of his ears and closes his eyes against crime;
16 this man will dwell in the heights, he will find refuge in a citadel built on rock, bread will be given him, he shall not want for water.
The glorious future
17 Your eyes are going to look on a king in his beauty, they will see an immense country;
18 your heart will look back on its fears: where is he who counted, where is he who weighed out, where is he who counted the precious stones?
19 You will no longer see the overweening people, the people of obscure, unintelligible speech, of barbarous, senseless tongue.
20 Look on Zion, city of our feasts, your eyes will see Jerusalem as a home that is secure, a tent not to be moved: its pegs not pulled out, not one of its ropes broken.
21 There Yahweh is princely to us, on the banks of broad-spreading rivers, where there rows no galley, there passes no majestic ship:
33:23a its tackle hangs loose, it supports the mast no longer, it does not hoist the pennon.
22 For Yahweh is our judge, Yahweh our lawgiver, Yahweh our King and our saviour.
33:23b Then immense booty shall be shared out, even the lame fall to plundering,
24 no one living there shall say, ‘I am sickly’; the people who live there will be forgiven all their faults.